Developer Steve Troughton-Smith has developed and Objective-C plugin for iPhone OS, and he’s sharing the source code on Github here. As he explains, it’s possible to create plugins for iPhone OS’ Safari, and the code structure is very similar to the one for desktop Safari. You just have to change NSView with UIView, he confirms.

Steve goes even further and suggests that Apple should release a public Safari Plugin SDK and “let developers decide”, and sure this would be an interesting perspective. As long as a plugin is developed with Apple’s technologies and is submitted to the App Store for approval, a whole new category of “applications” might be available for purchase and be able to change the way we use Mobile Safari.

Think about some sort of Flash built in this way. Or 1Password, or Evernote’s web clipper. Got the idea? Great, now take a look at the video after the break, where Steve shows Lights Off (an iPhone app he created) running inside Safari on the iPad simulator. Impressive.